Singing to you is as necessary as air

Ana Lucia Vlieg, poet and singer-songwriter, a blind friend of ours from Boston, told us she was struck by what Enzo “had allowed Christ to do in her life through the companionship of Fr. Giussani and the movement.” We read this in the short testimony in the February 2024 Newsletter, which you can find here. This time, we’d like to share one of her beautiful songs and her splendid voice, and tell you a little more about her.

Ana Lucia Vlieg Paulin was born in Panama. She earned a BA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston and a MA in English Language and Literature from Boston College.
In the musical field, she has participated in several recordings as a performer and composer, performing in various Latin American countries. She has published two collections of poetry: Mi Despertar Poético (1988) and Sueños y Esperas (1996). Her album Llamados includes songs she has composed and performed as a soloist.
She currently lives in Massachusetts, where she works as an office manager with her husband. She is a member of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation and an active volunteer in the immigrant community.
Themes of faith, love for one’s homeland, commitment to human dignity and solidarity, along with the ability to marvel at the simplicity of everyday life, are at the heart of her poetic and musical work.

She told us about herself and the song she sang at the evening dedicated to Enzo with these words:

My name is Ana Lucia Vlieg Paulin, and I was born in Panama 46 years ago. From a very young age, music and faith have been present in my life. As I grew older, I began to fall more and more in love with the person and message of Jesus Christ, lived within the Catholic Church.
It is from this love, and from the awareness of music as a tool of communication and beauty, that I developed the desire to tell my story of faith through the songs I write. After trying to sing about my experience of faith, I also imagined the encounters the Master had with the many characters of the Gospel, and I tried to recount them in my compositions.
The song “Come l’aria,” in particular, came about after some friends and I were thinking about the gift of breathing. It occurred to me that, just as air is vital to our physical life, the certainty of Christ’s presence among us and the knowledge that we are called to a friendship with Him are vital to our spirit.
I also thought about the fact that, having received the gift of experiencing this love and friendship with Him, I truly needed to share this good news with others. I remembered the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who described his need to speak of God as a burning fire within his bones, and those of Saint Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, where he said: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” For me, it is vital, like the air, to sing of His presence, to testify to the joy of knowing I am loved by Him, and to recount the beauty of the daily challenge of following the path His example has taught me.

Fondazione Enzo Piccinini